England vs India Lord's Test washout leaves MCC to pay £2m in ticket refunds
Lord’s experienced its first washout of a day of Test match cricket play since 2001 on Thursday leaving the MCC to refund around £2m worth of matchday tickets.
Rain insurance will cover the cost of refunds and the bars were busy at Lord’s all day so financially the hit will be relatively small but it now leaves the second Specsavers Test against India a four-day match with rain even preventing the toss from taking place on Thursday.
Both captains will name their teams on Friday and the weather may well have changed their plans.
The damp conditions will probably persuade England to play one spinner in Adil Rashid leaving Chris Woakes clear to resume his Test career after injury in place of the absent Ben Stokes.
India are likely to drop opener Shikhar Dhawan and replace him with Cheteshwar Pujara, who will bat at three. KL Rahul will move up to open with Murali Vijay.
India were set to pick two spinners if the match had started on Thursday but the wet weather and dampness in the pitch may change their plans with an extra seamer instead the better option.
After such a hot, dry summer, the wet weather could not have been timed worse with the first day of the Lord’s Test the showpiece event in the English cricket calendar.
It looked as though the rain would clear in the late afternoon allowing some play but a heavy shower persuaded the umpires to abandon the day at 4.50pm. The lost time will in part be made up over the rest of the match with 98 overs scheduled to be bowled for the remaining four days and play possible until 7pm on each evening.
It was the first time a whole day’s Test match play has been rained off in England since the Ashes Test at the Oval in 2013.
No news is not good news today
It continues to rain but if there is a dry spell there ought to be play very quickly because of the celebrated sand-based drainage system installed in 2003 to replace the clay beneath HQ. The likeliest scenario according to snouts at the ground is for a frantic post-tea session with the lights on but not much hope of play beforehand. If that changes I will let you know instanta.
Thoughts from the North
My wise friend Michael Heseltine writes:
For what it is worth I am in complete agreement about Dilip Vengsarkar and I have never really fathomed how some players (batsmen in particular) make it in to the God-like status which makes people teary-eyed over their brilliance and those who in my mind were just as good but do not get that sort of reverential recognition.
What was better than an off drive or cover drive by Vengsarkar? Moreover in the era of genuine fast bowling and questionable protective equipment. He got six centuries against the most fearsome bowling attack the world has ever seen – the 1980s West Indies – now that takes some doing ...
I always get scoffed at for my belief that Allan Lamb was a great batsman. Those who rubbish my genuine belief that this was a man who could bat in all manner of different situations and always selflessly, which had a dramatic impact on his mediocre test average, but it is the stats that they see ... cricket is not played in Excel ... (this bolsters my belief that the downturn in the fortunes of the country are inextricably linked with the rise and now insidious prominence of accountants in our community (those who believe in statistics and have no appreciation of reality).-As Wilde stated during his failed attempt to avoid Reading Gaol accountants "know the price of everything and the value of nothing”...
It is a funny old game ... a lot of sentiment is involved I reckon, but there are certain yard sticks that do not lie like statistics do (every single day in the press).
How many runs/hundreds scored against the West Indies in the 1980s and 1990s is a good a yard stick as any in my view ... Lamby’s record in that regard speaks for itself (and even in their back yard).
Last point on the matter who would you rather watch Cook or Vengsarkar and Lamby?
That's a great point about his selflessness, Michael. He always put the team first. Did anyone play Courtney Walsh as well as he did, and not just in Tests. I'll never forget how he managed that run chase in the 1987 World Cup against West Indies.
As it's still raining
Let's cast our minds back 27 years to the day and to accompany it here's Robert Philip's Telegraph interview with Jonathan Agnew on the 10th anniversary of the 'legover':
"It wasn't my line," Aggers admitted. "I stole it from John Etheridge of The Sun who told me, 'I know what our headline will be tomorrow - Ian Botham cocks it up by not getting his leg over'. Anyway, bad light stopped play and we had to fill in for a long time with replays; Johnners was being slightly naughty - as only he could be - about the incident when Botham had to straddle the stumps and I thought boof, I'll give it to him - 'he didn't quite get his leg over'. There was a lovely pause for about 10 seconds while it sank in then Johnners was gone.
"I knew he'd laugh but I didn't think it would actually have the effect on him it did. He couldn't speak and the whole thing descended into chaos. At the end of it all, Brian was seriously cross with himself because he'd lost it. I walked out of the Oval that day - and remember it was my first year with the Beeb - thinking, 'It probably wasn't very clever to have done that'.
"Of course, it was on the breakfast programmes the following day and everyone took it in the right spirit. I suppose I was lucky in a way because it helped establish me, not necessarily as a cricket correspondent, but as someone who liked a bit of a laugh which I think you need on the programme. It broke the ice between me and the listeners."
The Aggers and Johnners laugh-in cut no ice with Test Match Special producer Peter Baxter, however, who promptly separated the deadly duo like naughty schoolboys and banned them from working together henceforth. "Then the messages started pouring in from listeners demanding we be reunited so Peter plucked up the courage to allow us to reply to the letters one day during a tea break at Old Trafford the next summer.
"We succeeded in playing it all pretty straight-faced until I reached the very last one at the bottom of the pile. The umpires were coming down and I remember saying, 'right, Johnners, why is it that fielders have to appeal; why don't the umpires just give batsmen out on their own?' And when I saw the signature at the bottom I thought, 'oh, God, here we go'. So all I said was, 'it's from Berkshire', stifling a giggle.
"Johnners said, 'let's have a look then', and the name was William H Tit. He completely disintegrated, I went as well, and there was utter silence for about 20 seconds save for Johnners wheezing in the background. He had to be led out of the commentary box and Trevor Bailey had to step into the breach. Johnners actually wrote a letter of apology to Mr Tit but we never did get a reply."
Another Lord's memory
And, my goodness, Laurie's and now Nick Preston's puts mine in the shade [of Everest and K2]
My first memory of Lords was the wonderful World Cup final of 1983 between India ( their first) and West Indies…winners of the last three I think.
A wonderful Summer’s day, and in those days huge numbers of Indian and West Indies supporters all gathered and sitting on the grass behind the boundary ‘ropes’ - yes, ropes, yes on the grass ... and everyone had their cold boxes crammed with curries and whole fish, red stripe beers and selling to anyone who fielded close in!
What a game, not a 50 scored with the likes of Joel Garner, Marshall, Holding, Richards v Srikkanth, Kapil Dev, Gavaskar and Dujon ...WI only hit one six v India’s 3 …who would have bet on all that and for India to upset the odds and triumph!
A Lord's memory
Received with gratitude from Laurie Cole:
My mother took me to Lords for the first time in June 1963 to see England play the West Indies - I was only 10, but watched Wes Hall and Charlie Griffith in action and what a formidable partnership they were.
That was my abiding memory but I went to see England vs South Africa in 1965 when that great fielder Colin Bland ran out Parkes and Barrington.
Happy days!
Thank you, Laurie. That was the famous match when Brian Close was criticised for counter-attacking, England needed eight off the last over tow in with two wickets remaining and Colin Cowdrey had to come in with a broken arm to salvage the draw. What a special debut for you. Here are some highlights of that Tests from the Lord's video archive:
First Lord's Test?
Mine was in 1986 for England v India. I wrote about it here. What was yours? Please email your memories to rob.bagchi@telegraph.co.uk
I went on the Friday, hoping for a distraction from England’s humiliating start to the football World Cup in Mexico, but instead sat at the Nursery End in the colloquially if inaccurately named ‘Free Seats’ under oyster skies in a frosty gale and watched the two sides score 132 runs for the fall of six wickets in 83 overs of largely unremitting tedium.
As the dramatist Alan Bennett said: “It’s a good job childhood is at the beginning of our lives, we’d never survive it if it was in the middle.” The sun, a stranger that summer, made a brief appearance but no one but the bowler braved the day without both jumpers.
The match turned on the Saturday when Dilip Vengsarkar became the first and still the only non-Englishman to score a third Test century at the ground. He was a wonderfully elegant strokemaker rather than a shotmaker and deserves greater recognition alongside the holy trinity of Sunil Gavaskar, Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli.
Back in 2018, it's still raining at Lord's.
Good morning
And welcome to a gloomy Lord's where the covers are on, peppery clouds overhead and spots of rain on the cameras. After the best Test match in England for years, despite the rush to castigation on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday evenings, it's just our luck that the start of the second instalment will be delayed as this golden summer heat ends and Lord's reverts to its customary conditions when India visit.
During these switchback years since the Ashes 2013-14 whitewash, tempestuous Henry VI years, England have lost leads in series in 2015 against Australia, in 2016 against Pakistan and last year against South Africa and West Indies. It's a trite football saying that you're never more vulnerable than when you've gone 1-0 up but for England sustaining a lead has been exasperating even though being forced to fight back has made for thrilling series.
Today they take on India who have won at Lord's twice, in 1986 and the last time they were here in 2014. Ajinkya Rahane scored a first innings hundred to help India recover from 145 for seven, Bhuvneshwar Kumar took six wickets in the first innings and Ishant Sharma seven in the second as England wilted against the short ball. The absence of Ben Stokes who tormented the middle order with his pace, swing and angle of attack, convinces India that they will level the series here. We will have to wait for it to stop raining to discover whether they have bolstered the batting or moved Rahul up to open and picked two spinners. We know that Fifties throwback Ollie Pope will make his debut today but have yet to be informed whether Moeen Ali is back in the side after four Tests out or Chris Woakes returns after missing Edgbaston.
Two fallible sides provoked apoplexy among their supporters at times during the first three days at Edgbaston. More consistent application with the bat would be good for the blood pressure but would hobble the drama. Low-scoring nippers should be treasured.
